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The rain was a factor. Traffic was a factor – rain-related traffic, as well as your normal, end-of-the-workday-in-California traffic. The fact that Stanford and UCLA had met only six days before was a factor.

But how many fans were in attendance for Friday night's Pac-12 championship game? 31,622?

If you woke up this morning and went to StubHub, the online ticket marketplace, you could have purchased a ticket to Saturday's Big Ten championship game for $20.

You could have bought a ticket to Saturday's ACC championship game for $2. (A small cup of coffee at Starbucks costs $2.01, though Starbucks, unlike online ticket sites, doesn't charge any additional processing fees.)

Whether due to rain, traffic or some combination, there was not a tremendous amount of fan interest in Stanford and UCLA's second meeting in less than a week. Perhaps the fact that Wisconsin and Nebraska met in October – or that the Badgers have five losses – is driving down interest in the Big Ten championship. There's rarely any fan interest in the ACC title game, though the game did sell out in 2010 and 2011.

Then there's the SEC championship game, which is always the second-hottest ticket of the college football season – behind the BCS championship game, especially if the game features two SEC teams, not just one.

As of this morning, the cheapest ticket on StubHub to the SEC title game went for $289. The conference announced on Saturday that it had issued 857 media credentials. (That alone would be about 3% of Friday night's Pac-12 attendance.)

So what does the SEC have that the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC don't? A good matchup, for one. There's nothing wrong with Stanford-UCLA, other than the fact that the Bruins and Cardinal met to end the regular season on Nov. 24. But what about a five-loss Wisconsin team playing for a Rose Bowl berth? Or a six-loss Georgia Tech team playing for a spot in the Orange Bowl? None compare with 11-win Alabama playing 11-win Georgia.

FSU-Georgia Tech, for example, pits a team that lost last Saturday to the SEC's third-best team (FSU to Florida) against one that lost to Georgia last Saturday by 32 points. Why pay to attend the imitation-bran championship game when you can see the real thing?

Then there's the history: From 2006 to 2011, the winner of the SEC title game reached the BCS championship game. This year will be no different. The SEC just gets its conference championship game right; others – including the Big 12, when that league had 12 teams – stumble in finding the right combination.